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Lady Marjorie Bellamy
LADY MARJORIE BELLAMY (born Marjorie Helen Sybil Talbot-Carey) was a character in the 1970s UK period drama, Upstairs, Downstairs. She was played by the late UK actress Rachel Gurney. Marjorie was the daughter and eldest child of the 12th Earl of Southwold and Lady Mabel Southwold. She also had a younger brother named Hugo. She was always well aware of her social position, but she was also possessed of a kind and loving nature that endeared her with anyone she met. As a young woman, she met Richard Bellamy, an Oxford educated son of a country parson, and despite her parents reservations about him, married him. They helped him by finding him a parliamentary seat in South London, and they set up housekeeping, rent-free, at 165 Eaton Place in London's wealthy Belgravia area. The house was originally owned by her father who was also the Duke of Westminster, who, because of his title, owned the whole of Eaton Place. Marjorie gave birth to two children, James, a former military man who was known for having romantic affairs with women who were beneath his station; and Elizabeth, who was often rebellious and resentful of her place in society, mainly because, like her father, was really very shy and wasn't able to shine in society. While she often despaired that Elizabeth, due to her rebelliousness, would never find a husband, she often overindulged James and his romantic escapades. She was close friends with Lady Prudence Fairfax, who still remained a close family friend for many years thereafter. Lady Marjorie also had her share of flaws, even going so far as to have an affair with her son's friend, Major Charles Hammond. When the affair was revealed, Richard could have thrown her out of her house, but he did not. Marjorie had been angry with Richard for his not voting with the Tory party over an education bill, although he later did vote the Party line. When Marjorie married Richard, she had Angus Hudson, whom she first met as a footman on her father's estate; Mrs. Bridges, a former kitchen maid at Southwold who became a cook; and Rose Buck, a house parlor maid, come up from her home estate Southwold to become the foundation of the Eaton Place domestic staff. Sadly, in 1912, Lady Marjorie, her brother, Hugo; and his new wife, Marion Worsley, all perished in the sinking of the Titanic. Hugo's stepdaughter, Georgina Worsley, moved in with the Bellamys soon after that. Maude Roberts, Lady Marjorie's personal maid, survived the sinking, but was so racked with guilt about her death, that she went mad and was put in an asylum. Richard eventually remarried to a war widow named Virginia Hamilton, and they were happy from there on, he became the stepfather for Virginia's children, William and Alice; Elizabeth, after an unhappy marriage to one Lawrence Kirbridge (in which her daughter, Lucy Elizabeth Kirbridge was born) and an even more unhappier affair with an Armenian named Julius Karekin, finally found happiness with an American lawyer named Dana Wallace, and married him and remained in New York through the remainder of the series; while James, despondent after losing his money (and Rose's nest egg which he invested) in the Stock Market crash of 1929, committed suicide in a hotel in Maidenhead. Category:Upstairs, Downstairs characters Category:Fictional society matrons Category:Fictional socialites Category:Bellamy family